Wildfires ravage in remote valleys in Finland Reuters

Essie Leto

Helsinki (Reuters)-Finland’s worst wildfire in more than half a century burned for the fifth day in the northwest of the country on Friday, destroying forests that were dry due to summer heat.

Emergency rescuers said that firefighters rushed from all over Finland to the remote Karajoki Valley. 250 people and four helicopters were fighting the fire.

Strong winds blow from treetops to treetops, making it the second largest wildfire in the country’s history, covering an area of ​​about 300 hectares, which was surpassed only when it broke out in the same area 51 years ago.

Fire Chief Jarmo Haapanen told Reuters: “When it started spreading in the form of a treetop fire, we measured it to spread as high as 20 kilometers (12 miles) per hour.”

He added that although it has rained a little bit, it will take at least a week to extinguish the fire as the smoldering forest base continues to pose a danger.

Harpanin said: “If the drought continues and the wind starts to blow, it may still spread.”

Unlike the fires that raged in the western United States or southern Europe, the fires in the sparsely populated northern part of Finland did not damage houses or force people to evacuate.

As the anthropogenic emissions of endothermic carbon dioxide and other gases continue, the Arctic and subarctic regions of the Earth are issuing warnings faster than the global average.

The unusually long heat wave brought Finland’s temperature to a record high this summer. The average temperature in June was 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit), which was about 4-5 degrees higher than the historical average.

Scientists from the Finnish Meteorological Institute and the Natural Resources Institute concluded in a research paper that rising temperatures will make the fire conditions in the Nordic forests more favorable.

“In short, this means that transpiration is enhanced and the terrain dries faster,” Ilari Lehtonen, a meteorologist and research scientist at the Institute of Meteorology, told Reuters.